Are you living in a cave?
Too many startup people act like they are sitting in a cave inventing something utterly new.
Chances are, they’re not.
I constantly find myself amazed when I recommend a blog post, or a tactic to someone and they are like “Oh, that’s just what I need! I never thought to search for that.” Even more amazing is when someone labors day and night trying to figure out how to make a successful app yet has never heard of something like a/b testing.
I feel like these people must be living in caves.
One of the fun parts of the University of Chicago was that we constantly had to do research. This, plus being a programmer, entirely convinced me of the following:
“Whatever I am doing, a lot of other people have probably also tried to do it. Some of them have probably been way more successful than I have been so far. Some of them have probably written books or blog posts about how they successfully did what I am doing now. I can find these books and blog posts on Google and then apply what they say.”
The four sentences above are somehow not common knowledge, in my experience. I have no idea why.
February 01, 2010
